The Chang Nam, or “water elephant”, is native to the jungle streams of Thailand. Its equivalent in Myanmar is called the Ye Thin.

A chang nam looks like a miniature replica of an elephant. It is no bigger than a rat but has a trunk and sharp little tusks and all the hallmarks of elephants.

These water elephants are extremely dangerous. Merely seeing a chang nam’s shadow causes instant death. A chang nam will also stab footprints and reflections in the water with its tusks, bringing about the death to the owner of the footprint or reflection.

It seems uncertain whether the chang nam has a purely supernatural origin or if it has some real animal as its basis. Nonetheless, stuffed chang nam skins are available for sale to gullible tourists; these are manipulated frog or rodent skins with tusks attached.

Who would win in a death-match; the Basilisk or the Chang Nam?
I would bet on the Chang Nam. It’s very tiny and thus sneaky and would probably stab the basilisks footprints/reflection before it could see the lilliputtian pachyderm of doom.

Which makes me wonder… while the basilisk has a number of weaknesses and specific life cycle requirements to regulate it’s effects on the surrounding ecology, what would stop this little fella from completely depopulating the jungles, unless the Chang Nam reproduces at an extremely slow rate.
Is it only I or has anyone else here speculated about how the ecology would work (or fail) if magical creatures were actually real?

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Our imagination has always been our greatest ally, and our worst enemy. In the face of the unknown, we populated it with creatures of all shapes and sizes, from minuscule spirits to gigantic cosmic monsters. These entities have shared our world ever since we earned the capacity to wonder.

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